Category: Climate & Environment

This category is climate change in relation to sustainability and CSR and how these segments effect one another. This includes how climate change has started to cause a wide range of physical effects with serious implications for investors and businesses, and how the business sector discloses climate risks and manage them.

Stan Cox is a senior researcher at the Land Institute. His book, Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air Conditioned World, describes the threat that our ever-increasing need for air conditioning poses to efforts to maintain our planetary climate within its natural limits.

Adidas is in the race with Nike and Puma to manufacture athletic apparel more responsibly and sustainably. To that end, the company recently produced 50,000 DryDye t-shirts that were dyed without using any water.

Last week, Darden Restaurants, Inc., the umbrella corporation for restaurant chains such as Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and LongHorn Steakhouse, released its 2012 sustainability report, hitting another benchmark in its CSR efforts. The report highlights the progress Darden has made in all areas of sustainability within its over 1,900 restaurants, 180,000 employees, and global supply … Continued

The tiny crates that pork producers keep pregnant pigs in are cruel by most definitions – but those pigs have had some unlikely heroes this year. As more retailers update their policies, the ones that refuse look more and more cruel by comparison.

The green blogs were buzzing last week with news of a new bombshell report that affirms the role of human activity in global warming. Studies affirming climate science are nothing new to say the least, but this one was produced through the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project (BEST), under the auspices of well known climate … Continued

You might be surprised to learn that coal consumption in this country has fallen significantly. In fact, coal, which provided 50% of the nation’s electricity, is now providing only 33%. Meanwhile, as annual consumption dropped to 206.9 million tons, stockpiles have reached 244 million tons. So what shall we do with all that extra coal?

Unilever has announced it will reach its target of 100 percent certified sustainable palm oil covered by GreenPalm Certificates by the end of 2012, three years ahead of its original schedule. This success is in step with the company’s previous Good Agricultural Practice Guidelines for oil palm established in the mid-1990s as part of Unilever’s Sustainable Agriculture Program.

Good Eggs, a San Francisco-based startup aiming “to bring people and food closer together,” launched a pilot this week. It provides local farmers and food makers with an online storefront (webstand) and a system that helps reduce all that time-consuming administrative stuff. To locavores, Good Eggs offers an easy way to find and buy local food. Sounds like a win-win but can it become a game changer like Airbnb?

Many businesses, schools and other institutions, out of concern for the people they serve, and for the planet, have adapted a “Meatless Monday” program. When the folks who put together the US Department of Agriculture’s internal sustainability newsletter, The Greening Headquarters Update, suggested that they join the program in the Department’s own cafeteria, they were surprised to receive a stern rebuke from the beef industry.

Within 3 months of certification the first Fair Trade coffee estate’s 110 workers (40% of whom are women) earned $7,250 in community development premiums, which they elected to invest in critical healthcare programs.

Situated an hour outside Los Angeles, in Camarillo, California, Houwelings Tomatoes fuses nature with technology to produce millions of tomatoes every year. Leading the company is extreme innovator and CEO, Casey Houweling.